Wired’s Favorite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time — Star Wars and After

Wired.com and Wired magazine have so many favorite science-fiction films that it’s taking us two days to list ‘em all. To honor Tuesday’s 107th anniversary of A Trip to the Moon, we showed you what we like pre–Star Wars. Here are our faves from then ’til now.

Capricorn One (1978)

Alien (1979)

Beyond-claustrophobic scary, with secret agendas, an expendable crew, an evil robot and no clear sighting of the menacing protagonist until the movie is almost over. This would have been the first sci-fi movie that made me scared of outer space if I hadn’t first seen Outland. —John Abell

Stalker (1979)

Stalker is an existential sci-fi masterpiece from Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. Filmed during the Cold War, the story takes place in a no-go area called “The Zone.” Deep within the The Zone, one’s secret fantasies are waiting to be fulfilled. Like all of Tarkovsky’s films, the haunting imagery of Stalker is more like a dream than a movie. It should also be noted that Tarkovsky shot Stalker at an abandoned hydroelectric power plant in Estonia. Tarkovsky, his wife Larissa, and the film’s star, Anatoly Solonitsyn, all died of cancer, perhaps due to contamination, within a decade of the film’s release. —Annaliza Savage

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Outland (1981)

A retelling of High Noon set in a off-planet mining facility that could have been in the Old West, where the law is a washed-up sheriff with an inexplicable Scottish accent who just won’t sell out, more bounty hunters, a Dr. McCoy–like sidekick and a villainous Peter Boyle who hadn’t been this sleazy a character since Joe. —John Abell

2010 (1984)

Great cinematography right from the opening shots comparing human scale with the Very Large Array of radiotelescopes and that implicitly with the universe. The point-of-view spacewalk out-vertigoes Alfred Hitchcock’s trick shots in Vertigo, and the scene’s sound mix of pulse and respiration makes it vertiginously frightening. –Randy Alfred

The Hidden (1987)

Is it the best movie about giant alien slugs that take over human bodies so they can indulge in earthly pleasantries like driving sports cars, going to strip clubs and mercilessly slaughtering innocents? Maybe. The best one starring Kyle MacLachlan? Definitely. —Michael Calore

Robocop (1987)

Spaceballs (1987)

It may not count, because it’s a Mel Brooks comedy, but in my estimation you have to be really smart about sci-fi to make the kind of jokes they make in that film, which in turn makes it the nerdiest thing ever. Geeks geeking out about being geeks, you know? I recently watched it with some current and former Wired folks and we pretty much quoted the entire movie beginning to end. Again, geeks geeking out about being geeks. —Angela Watercutter

Terminator II (1990)

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Nobody does desperate, crazy, dirty, tooth-pulling time traveler like Bruce Willis. Plus, it’s the first time the world realized Brad Pitt’s best roles are when he plays bat-shit insane guys. —Erin Biba

Starship Troopers (1997)

The brilliant CG animation of the buglike aliens still looks great 12 years later. But what really makes this film timeless (and timely) is the way that it layers wicked satire and subtle commentary on fascism, colonialism and wartime propaganda underneath all of the gung-ho action movie clichés. —Chris Baker

The Iron Giant (1999)

Love that movie, always makes me cry. —Louise Knapp

Based on Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel, The Iron Man: A Children’s Story in Five Nights. A brilliant, accessible and balanced portrayal of innocence, violence and paranoia, The Iron Giant flopped two years before 9/11, and its level-headed analysis of weaponry and peace was swept away in the debris. But its stature has only grown in the decade since, and it remains a shining example of that lost art: A film for all ages. It’s a hilarious Cold War cultural satire wrapped up in a movie about a boy and his misunderstood robot that wants to be Superman. It’s timeless. —Scott Thill